Archive for 2010/08/12

Broadband investment: Critical to the future or misplaced priority?

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Bandwidth Management, Education / Awareness, Net Neutrality, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

 a survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (PDF) finds that more than half of Americans (53 percent) think that broadband expansion in the U.S. isn’t important enough to be a government priority, with some going so far as to say that efforts to expand broadband should be abandoned

But President Obama was absolutely right when he said, just before his inauguration that “It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption.” Ask anyone who has ever traveled abroad and they won’t hesitate to tell you how far behind the U.S., compared to other countries.

The government’s investment isn’t in technology. Its investment is in the widespread access to technology. If Washington is serious about making the U.S. a world leader in technology, then this is a first-step investment toward that goal

More: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/broadband-investment-critical-to-the-future-or-misplaced-priority/37954

Intel sponsoring contest to develop best netbook games

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness, Tech Evolution

Of course, Intel has a vested interest in promoting netbooks, as most of the little laptops are powered by the chip company’s Atom processors

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/intel-sponsoring-contest-to-develop-best-netbook-games/3559

Google, Apple, Netflix are among those trying to shape 21st Century TV

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

As television evolves into its own 21st Century version, the forces behind the scenes are working hard to carve out their own niche, thought it will be tough to guess which model will do best…

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-apple-netflix-are-among-those-trying-to-shape-21st-century-tv/37945

Strategize to Outsmart Your Cyber Adversaries

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection

Tuesday, September 7th at 2:00 pm EST

We live in a de-perimeterized world where legacy security technologies are virtually blind to sophisticated threat tactics. It is increasingly harder to answer senior management’s tough security questions relating to data exfiltration, malware infestation, or fraud activity with any degree of confidence. In order to get the clarity necessary to provide in-depth answers, organizations must evolve and adapt their enterprise security strategy to close the gaps between existing defense in depth and to obtain better visibility and detection across the network.

Join Josh Corman, Research Director, of The 451 Group’s Enterprise Security Practice and Eddie Schwartz, Chief Security Officer of NetWitness, for an in-depth discussion on the impact adaptive persistent adversaries (APA) can have on an organization, and the critical steps that should be taken to improve your overall situational awareness and increase your agility to respond to future cyber threats.

This webinar will answer:

  • Why should I care about APA and how are they different from other threats?
  • Where are the gaps in current defenses?
  • What are some of the critical elements for a next generation security strategy?
  • How can network security monitoring help improve the efficiency of existing security operations?

http://netwitness.com/resources/webcasts/sept072010_451group.aspx

Nutball Wikileaks founder tries to blackmail Amnesty International

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness

Earlier this week, Amnesty International and four other organizations emailed Wikileaks and Assange requesting exactly what I recommended last week, that the Web site take better care in choosing what to disclose.

When Amnesty International asked for better filtering so civilians aren’t killed in the most gruesome of ways as a result of his actions, he demanded $700,000 for what he called a “harm minimization review”.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/nutball-wikileaks-founder-tries-to-blackmail-amnesty-international/9280

Previously:

http://contentprotection.wordpress.com/?s=wikileaks

China Mobile, Xinhua launch search venture

Posted: 2010/08/12 in New Business Models

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20013429-93.html

Hollywood enforcer drops a bollock

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement

among the deleted videos were five from Sixtus and Lehmann —- all under CC licenses

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/42829

KickassTorrents Taken Down After Copyright Concerns

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

KickassTorrents, one of the fastest growing and most visited torrent sites on the Internet, has been pulled offline after an inquiry from the Ukrainian authorities

http://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-taken-down-after-copyright-concerns-100812/

Google, boffins crack Rubik’s Cube mystery

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness, Google

Has Google finally cracked it? Revealed today, courtesy of the massed ranks of Google computing, the answer to the ultimate question – not the old one about Life the Universe and Everything – is 20!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/12/google_rubik_solved/

MoD bod warns of cyber attack risk

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness

due to substantial losses of personal data in the past, the department has undertaken considerable work to prohibit the use of unencrypted media

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/12/mod_accounts/

LA reporter abandons YouTube copyright case

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness, Google, Litigation

A Los Angeles journalist who was accused of leaking confidential court documents from his lawsuit against YouTube has abandoned his suit and has agreed to pay $20,000 to the video-sharing site

YouTube, which is owned by Google, previously had claimed that court documents with excerpts from CEO Eric Schmidt’s deposition were leaked to CNET reporter Greg Sandoval and excerpted in two articles that appeared last fall. Schmidt’s deposition described how Google decided on the $1.65 billion it paid for YouTube

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20013411-38.html

Previously:

I’m not very good at math, but I think that would be $1 billion or so more than you thought the company was, in fact, worth.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10360384-261.html

And:

Schmidt told delegates at the conference that the availability of information increased convenience, and enabled society to more effectively combat anti-social and criminal behaviour

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/8/5/no-anonymity-future-web-says-google-ceo/

Google Alarm for Firefox Screams Every Time Google Spies You

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection

Not many people are aware about how many times Google collects personal browsing data whenever you visit a web page. If you have Firefox, now you can install Google Alarm and make this fact painfully and annoyingly clear

http://gizmodo.com/5610018/google-alarm-for-firefox-screams-every-time-google-spies-you

GE: Visible You Installation

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Tech Evolution

an ultra-quick responsive gesture-based system that lets its users see themselves in the form of their major biological systems: circulatory, digestive, respiratory and nervous

http://creativity-online.com/work/ge-visible-you-installation/20889

Why Aren’t More Companies Sued For Bogus ‘Unlimited’ Service Claims?

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Bandwidth Management, Litigation

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100809/17141510562.shtml

Applying Policy Management Solutions to Handle Data Deluge Efficiently and Cost Effectively

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Bandwidth Management, Education / Awareness, Tech Evolution

The proliferation of new service capabilities, enabled by the evolution of 4G networks and smart mobile devices, has resulted in the exponential increase in data generation by customers using both mobile and fixed-line services.

Frost & Sullivan’s research group Stratecast thinks that the answer is in a real-time solution that can define and enforce policy rules to network and service delivery platforms (SDPs) based on customer-defined service usage limits, service agreement definitions, and network considerations. According to Stratecast, such a real-time triumvirate solution is a core to real-time business support. The following components are part of Stratecast’s policy management solution: Policy Definition and Management, Data Collection and Policy Enforcement, Real-time Rating & Charging.

http://policy-management.tmcnet.com/topics/policy-management/articles/94931-applying-policy-management-solutions-handle-data-deluge-efficiently.htm

TIA Applauds Obama’s Commitment to Nearly Double Available Spectrum for Mobile Communications

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Mobile tech, Public Policy

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) says it “applauds” a recent statement from President Obama for recognizing “the urgent need to make large bands of spectrum available for mobile communications devices.”

http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/voip-termination/articles/94914-tia-applauds-obamas-commitment-nearly-double-available-spectrum.htm

Smartphone security put on test

Posted: 2010/08/12 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection

BBC News has shown how straightforward it is to create a malicious application for a smartphone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10912376

See also:

There’s no question of any law having been infringed here – the BBC has not distributed the application. However, we believe its actions to be unethical and unwise

http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/2257/Oops_they_did_it_again